ic March Badness

[N/A]

The vision hit Erick Sloane like a runaway truck.  The vision which hit Erick Sloane was a runaway truck.  An armored car crashed right into him.  It couldn't have been him, because the car smashed into him and crumpled around him like he was a stone pillar or a steel lamppost.  The impact had lifted the back tires into the air, and they didn't have time to fall back down to the street before whatever the car crashed into lifted or pushed it up and over, to land upside-down onto the street behind it.

Erick blinked his eyes, and saw the uniformed drivers lying on the ground, convulsing like marionette puppets as dozens if not hundreds of bullets shredded their torsos.  Their kevlar vests weren't built to take so many direct hits at such close range all at once.  Blood mingled with engine oil before soaking into the asphalt.

In the background, as the vision faded away, Erick could just barely make out the reflection of the cheque-cashing shop's sign in the spiderwebbed remains of the armored car's window.  He recognized the place.  It was across the street from a decent taqueria.

Edited April 18, 2015 by ShaenTheBrain

[Brown Dynamite]

Erick grabbed on to a nearby wall taking a moment to reorient himself.  Ugh, the vivid ones are the worst.  The precognitive acrobat knew there was no time for self-pity.  Lives were at stake.  Rushing through his manor, he descended to the underground bunker of the estate.  And proceeded to waste no time in dressing for the part.   Donning the identity of the costumed Foreshadow!  

The scene was some distance away.  Especially with traffic in the Southside being what it was.  If there was any solace when presented with what Foreshadow had just foreseen.  It was that the man had just the right ride for the job.  Hopping aboard his Zultasian Gravcycle, inherited from the late King of Suits, Foreshadow sped off towards the taqueria.  

"One of these days I'll run into a subtle thief."

[N/A]

Keahi Kekoa pulled his dark blue mask up from the back of his neck down over his eyes as he bent down over one knee to peer over the edge of the ten-story roof.  The Southside streets looked very far away.  "C'mon, K, eye of the tiger!  You're bulletproof.  You got this!"  He clapped his hands together, turned his back on the edge of the roof, and jumped.

*BOINGGG*

The Newt hit the asphalt like a basketball hitting the backboard, bouncing right back up into the air.  "YEEEE-HAWWW!!!" he shouted as the roof he'd been standing on a moment ago came rushing back into view.  He reached out toward another building, a block away, and his arm telescoped across the street until his fingers wrapped around a windowsill.  He pulled on that windowsill, and redirected the momentum from his fall into a forward swing.  A confused twentysomething with glasses and hair pulled up in a messy bun ran to her window and did a double-take at Keahi's hand.  He gave her a wink before plummetting back down to the street, this time bouncing in a forward arc instead of straight up.  At the high point, he turned back over his shoulder, stuck his thumb in his mouth, blew into it like a straw until his hand was as large as the rest of his body put together, and flashed her a "thumbs-up."

[N/A]

It was after sundown, after closing, and this cheque-cashing shop was the last stop on the armored car's route for the day.  The two security officers in the front had made this stop on this route a hundred times before without incident, so their attention was focused less on their upcoming task and more on the Freedom Rayguns and their chances of taking the NBA championship this season.  They were pulling around the corner, but they hadn't noticed the two painter vans which had just pulled up from the opposite direction.  They hadn't yet seen the dozen men in full-face painter masks pulling TEC-9s out of their coveralls, or the leader who carried no gun and wore no mask, electing instead to display his shaved head and swastika-tattooed neck proudly for the world to see.  The drivers were, at this moment, oblivious to the wisps of blue flame which began to dance around him.  There was no sign they were aware of the only other man who didn't carry a gun, whose coveralls started to tear and split around his muscles as they inflated unevenly like bicycle tires.

The neo-Nazi's spontaneous self-immolation continued slowly but steadily as he and his crew walked toward the oncoming armored car.  "Even the Jew banks won't touch the hoodrat money here.  We'll wash the crack off of it and use it to help people who work for a living."  He turned to the man who was steadily expanding into vague blob of muscle.  "You're a warrior for the white race now.  Pull your weight and pay your debts, and we'll make this city safe for decent folk."

[Brown Dynamite]

Foreshadow knew where to go.  That made things all the easier.  Especially when weaving in an out of traffic was less off a concern for the gravbike.  Most common traffic could be avoided simply by increasing altitude.  By the time the armored truck came into his peripheral he knew he was cutting it close.  Too close to rely on any degree of subtlety.  Not that he'd have it any other way.  Better to have the bullets trained on him than anyone else was his motto.

Seeing the large muscular form in the distance Foreshadow sped up.  Process of elimination dictated that the truck had to have crashed into something or someone.  It seemed almost karmic to do the slamming himself.  Before his red bike crashed right into the man made of muscle and more muscle, Foreshadow flipped backwards off the vehicle landing on the ground directly at the point of impact.

"Just so we're all clear the last rejects with an outdated backwards philosophy to run into me ended up with more broken bones than I care to count.  MIght be a good time to surrender boys."  Erick was addressing White Knight's "masses" as it were. He doubted that madman would listen to any semblance of reason.  But at least it wasn't a repeat of the Winter Olympics.  Only one muscled out super soldier to deal with. 

[Brown Dynamite]

Running towards the large muscular man Foreshadow hopped across his bike.  Gracefully treading on the vehicle with soft feather like steps.  Swinging his arms back Foreshadow would once propel himself through the air with his legs swinging like a pendulum.  Only his legs were not tucked for this backflip.  Instead Foreshadow managed to plant his boots flush underneath the jaw of the large thug.  Sending his head flying as the acrobatic hero ended up back at ground level.

Guess I'll have to work on the guys with guns first.  Foreshadow had fought enough tanks to figure out when someone was going to stick around for a prolonged beating.  No use in having bullets flying around while dealing with that.  To speak nothing of the racist with fire dancing around him.

[N/A]

The mountain of muscle still vaguely shaped like a man staggered backward from the impact of the grav-bike slamming into his chest.  His boots scraped against the asphalt for a few inches.  But then he wrapped his giant sausage fingers around the chassis and lifted the bike up over his head.  "THANKS" he shouted as he brought the bike crashing down on the spot where Foreshadow was standing a fraction of a second before.  To outside observers, it looked as if the behemoth barely missed the nimble vigilante, but to Foreshadow, his every movement did such a thorough job of telegraphing his next step that it looked more like he was moving in slow motion.

Trusting his men to do their jobs, Daniel Foreman kept his eyes on the prize.  He clenched his fists as he sauntered toward the oncoming armored car, then braced himself in a crouch and thrust his palms forward.  The blue flames which had been dancing along his body rushed down toward his hands, condensed into a sphere, and hurled into the ground directly beneath the front bumper, exploding on impact.  The heat and force of the flames instantly melted both front tires and most of the front end.  The armored car jumped up into the air and came back down on its side.  The fireball didn't break the car's momentum.  It slid down the street almost as fast as it had been driving, twisting back and forth in a semicircle as it smashed into parked cars, knocked down a lamppost, and uprooted a series of parking meters and small trees.

The robbers dressed as painters hefted their TEC-9s and MAC-10s and did their best to empty their clips somewhere into Foreshadow's general direction.  They may as well have been trying to swat a fly, with how easily he seemed to twirl, flip and pivot in the spaces between the bullets.  A single round might have tagged him, or just his clothes; they couldn't be sure.

Out of the corner of his eye, while dodging the hurricane of gunfire, Foreshadow thought he caught a glimpse of an elderly couple on the sidewalk, one of them trying to bend down to help the other off the ground, right in the path of the out-of-control metal box that used to be a vehicle...

[N/A]

The gunfire rang out into the night, knocking The Newt out of his adrenaline-fueled reverie.  As he approached the apex of his bounce, almost a quarter mile into the air, he reached out with an arm which now stretched over a hundred feet and pushed off against a building.  His eyeballs stretched into giant ovals bulging out of his mask, giving him a clear view of the armed robbery in progress down on the ground.  As he soared through the air, he took a deep breath, and snapped his limbs back to their normal lengths.  His torso inflated into a sphere, and his limbs and head flattened down against it.

He landed in the midst of the coverall-clad miscreants, and bounced from the ground into a thug's chest, and from there to another, and another.  Each impact knocked the wind out of the thug on the other side, launching the man and his weapon flying in different directions to land unconscious onto the street.  After ricocheting off of about half a dozen of the armed men, The Newt landed back-to-back with Foreshadow, his flesh snapping back to its normal human shape as his feet hit the pavement.  He raised his fists in front of him in an exaggerated fighting stance, and the fists themselves expanded to the size of boxing gloves.

"Something tells me these guys aren't here to touch up the crown molding.  You gotta name or-WHOA!"  His neck stretched about a foot, his head spun around 180 degrees, and his eyes bulged out of his mask again into spheres thrice their normal size when the fireball leapt out from Foreman's hands and blew up the front end of the armored car.

[Brown Dynamite]

"Foreshadow.  Punch now, I'll explain the details after I walk a little old lady across the street."  Foreshadow called out as he ran off.  Or White Knight can monologue about it.  He looks like a monologuer.  Reaching for his multi purpose escrima sticks in mid run.  The right escrima stick held his grapnel line.  With a push of a button the four pronged hook would burst forth.  He just had to aim just right.  It'd be cutting it close, but like always Foreshadow lived for the pressure.

One didn't need to see the future to figure out what would happen if the armored car continued on its wayward path.  The few stray bullets that had managed to scrape against the side of his costume and barely graze his flesh did nothing to slow the hooded acrobat.  The one that hit the protective underlays and almost broke a rib was a little problematic.  But, Erick didn't have time to catch his breath.

He had a job to do.  Leaving complete trust in the stranger whom had just showed up on the scene, Foreshadow hadn't even considered turning around.  Not before finally propelling himself through the air towards an elderly couple that was in the direct path of the armored car.